Whist, Robert - Accountant
by Mr. Scrint
Summary: Robert Whist, a middle-aged accountant, is suddenly stranded in the world of Pokemon. He likes quiet reading, tea, and jumps at loud noises. Unfortunately for him, he is also rather fond of living, which tends to make things difficult when the whole world is out to kill him. A world of adventure awaits him! ... whether he wants it or not.
1. The Living Boulder

I

Things were not going well for Robert Whist. In the dark forest clearing, the thirty-year-old slowly turned and counted the glowing eyes leering at him from the shadows. He divided by two, and realized that the number of maws growling in hunger suddenly made him hate arithmetic. The black forms of the creatures slid into one another like a mist of eldritch flesh, and their cries - urgent, loud, and more alien than any animal born of Earth or bred in Hell - carried on the rising wind like the echo of a nightmare most horrible.

But Robert was brave. This is, at least, how the other accountants at work described him when he ate a four-day-old egg salad sandwich from the employee refrigerator. Robert told himself that this would probably end very much like that experience: gruesomely, and with a need for toilet paper. At every noise the creatures made, whether distressing snarl or gnash of teeth or crack of twigs, he courageously threw up his hands and whimpered like a fear-stricken mouse. A leaf blew across his leg and he squeaked. With herculean will, Robert refrained from relieving himself in his suit, and backed away slowly. The eyes advanced.

The Author, however, is getting ahead of himself, and before the plot goes completely out of his control and whirlwinds into what is sure to be an exciting scene of perilous danger and narrow escape, he asks the reader to momentarily take a step back, _no_, not that far, and to flip back a couple pages to where the _true_ story begins, which is inside Robert's flat, waking up to the ring of his alarm clock, and eating his morning breakfast: hot coffee with a side of jam and toast.

The Author sees that some of you are visibly upset, and wishes to assure the reader that all of these details are extremely important in understanding the complex character of Robert Whist, including, but not limited to: what toothpaste he brushed his teeth with, what color socks he put on that day, how long the commute to work was, the weather - _especially, _the weather - and the precise amount of change he gave the homeless woman outside of his office (hint: none at all). All of these details, and more, are imperative to the structure of the story, and must be experienced, in order, without delay, and with full confidence that they will be vital in the chapters to come, as we slowly but surely approach the exciting scene described in the opening paragraphs, which should take no less than twenty or so thousand words and a couple of illuminating, suspenseful, action-packed flashbacks concerning Robert as a small child, his Aunt Rhoda, and an Italian spinster, before the reader is sufficiently briefed enough to enjoy the scene in its fullest.

As the Author gathers himself to his most erect and prominent height, and splays his hands over his work magnanimously, he knows that the reader will understand his tactics as the controlled literary mechanisms of a master storyteller, because no matter of what distinction, readers are smart, understanding, and above all, patie-_hurk_!

The Author is jerked physically from his desk by hands bandaged from numerous paper cuts, veteran metacarpals that have survived the harrows of turning hundreds, if not thousands of pages, and currently belonging to several muscular readers who have simply had enough with this nonsense. The readers, with muscles toned from the intense volume of literature which they have absorbed in near-hermit-like study, their brawn boasting with the combined strength of all the works of Dostoyevsky, Orwell, Shakespeare, Milton, Aristotle, Homer, Sophocles, and many more, then proceed to beat the Author to within an inch of his contrived and poorly plot-structured life. After a time, they leave to pursue their next target, a lonely teenage girl with a misguided obsession for Harry Potter, a copy of Microsoft Word on her laptop, and far too much free time.

The Author, his literary schemes ruffled, his ships dashed, jokes criticized, idioms scoffed, and bones a bit tenderer than before, stands and returns shakily to his desk. As he massages his writer's hand, he sniffs forlornly, remarking on what would have been a really interesting scene in which Robert spilled coffee on his tie and would rush to the restroom to secure some paper towels, and which will undoubtedly go unadmired. Choking back tears, and an overwhelming tendency to ruin a good narrative, he returns to the story at hand...

A sudden noise dislodged Robert's balance, however, as the Author re-adjusted his papers, and he landed sprawled on the ground next to a large rock. Instinctively, he curled into a fetal position. After a moment though, common sense took over and Robert pressed himself against the convenient boulder, for its bulk was easily the size of a small house. The creatures had surprisingly not taken advantage of his tumble to attack, and merely watched him from the shadows, their eyes clustered together like a great wall of malevolent fireflies. Their presence formed a perfect semi-circle around him, and in the screaming, petrified state of Robert's mind, he could not help noticing that they did not appear to want to break this geometric perfection. Their eyes, the only visible part that Robert could see through the darkness, darted, swayed, and sidled left and right, but never seemed to get any closer than the invisible ten meter berth they had given him. A few were howling pitifully. Their gaze bore into him, and Robert felt as though they were accusing him of something, but they did not approach. Against his better instincts, he allowed a bit of hope to surface amongst the fatalistic thoughts sinking in his head. Robert looked at the rock. He'd climb it, he told himself. He'd get up to the very top and then he'd be safe.

_At least rocks didn't try to eat you._

Robert tried not to think about what he would do if the creatures could climb though, and instead focused on gathering his strength. With the resolve and determination of a man about to be eaten, Robert thrust out his hand and gripped a piece of the rock, preparing to vault over it like the trained mountaineer he most certainly was not. He heaved. His feet left the earth. The chunk in his grasp suddenly snapped away as easy as if it had been shale, and his feet fell back to the ground heavily. Instantly, his menial nature took over, and Robert was already apologizing before he could restrain himself.

"My bad," he said. The effect was startling.

The forest sucked in its breath in a hush that vacuumed the sound away like a black hole. Robert, who had a sixth sense when it came to detecting danger from all the years he spent as a scrawny young lad being pelt by erasers, felt the back of his skull itching as though on fire. He turned around, the chunk still in his grip. A hundred pairs of eyes watched him in shocked silence. The evil chattering had disappeared. Gleaming jaws hung aghast. Even the wind had gone quiet, as though the Author had run out of things which could, in fact, be aghast and was making stuff up. Slowly, as one, as though they themselves were in some sort of nightmare, the creatures turned their gaze to the piece of rock in Robert's small, guilty hand.

"It broke," said Robert to the creatures, rather stupidly.

They stared at him. Though the species gap was immense, the look held meaning to Robert. He had gotten it from his boss only once before, when he'd accidentally rounded up instead of down on a company tax file. The difference was only one tenth of a percent, but that was a big deal when numbers were hanging around the ten thousand and hundred thousand dollar phyles. When the report came back a few days later, his boss went bug-eyed and gave him the same deer-in-the-headlights look these creatures were giving him now.

'_Do you realize what you've just done?' _they seemed to say.

Robert had only three seconds to contemplate. Then the world ended.

The ground shook. A tremor buckled the earth like a sine wave. Sounds rushed back into the forest from all sides and collided mid-air with the force of a thunderclap. The creatures were howling in panic, dashing left, right, in circles, behind trees. Roots snapped from the ground like tent cables in a hurricane. Leaves were evacuating their trees in colonies. The clouds, feeling it best to watch from a safer distance, parted, drifting away briskly, and a wash of moonlight flooded the forest. Robert could see the creatures fully now, no longer mere bodies of shadow, but no less horrifying. Moths as big as cars flapped madly into the sky. Dog-like monsters that looked as though their bones preferred being on the outside rather than in, whined and whimpered like scared puppies. A whinnying chimera of a giraffe and a horse cantered past, and Robert almost fainted when he saw its spherical tail flicker by, for the appendage had great eyes and a hideous, toothy grin as wide as a ruler and seemed to smile at him with a terrifying sentience. Robert ran. He got only a few feet before another roll of earth bowled him over. The ground was as turbulent as vibrating Jell-O, and Robert could not help but scream. Stone that had been buried for centuries suddenly felt the need to see some action and eagerly erupted into the fray. Pebbles danced the Macarena. Soft ground sank into a depression, unable to cope with the stress of surface life anymore. Strata shoved each other aside as great tectonics budged for room. A spider web of cracks shot from the massive, house-sized boulder where Robert had been standing, and a roar like the arrival of a rockslide groaned through the forest.

Robert's eyes vibrated in their sockets; there was suddenly three times the amount of forest surrounding him, and out from it came a charging beast. It was the size of a bear, had sharp teeth, and was headed straight for him, and that was enough information for Robert to begin panicking. He screamed louder, which was very impressive considering the decibels his current screaming was reaching, as he felt its jaws latch onto his shirt's collar and drag him bodily into the forest. Robert pointlessly tried to wriggle free and slip out of his clothes, but his arm was stuck in its sleeve. He pinwheeled his other arm madly, like a one-oar canoe. The creature trotted briskly with him in its mouth, unencumbered by his protests.

An ear-splitting _Crunch!_ tore through the woods. As the world shook, and Robert was dragged into the black forest, he got one last look at the boulder he'd been cowering behind, and saw with disbelief that the house-sized rock was lifting up into the sky. A column of stone followed behind, bellowing forth like a volcanic eruption. A horror rose like bile in the mind of Robert Whist, as the stone boulder he had huddled against contorted in agony, twisting itself into what was unmistakably in the haunting light of the moon the face of some hideous monster, its mouth, for indeed there was now a mouth, opening in a roar of anger that swept the forest. It rose, snakelike, from the depths of the earth, twisting, coiling, climbing towards an ink-black sky like some hellish tower of Babylon. Its eyes were coals. Its tail a giant's spade.

Robert gibbered incoherently, then passed out. The beast dragging him took no notice, and continued on through the night, and away from the monster wreaking havoc behind them.


	2. The Old Man In The Shack

II

Robert awoke screaming. The old man hurriedly stuffed a filthy rag in his mouth.

"Hush, you!" he said. "D'you know what time it is?"

Robert didn't know. It was too dark to tell. "_Mphpmph,"_ he gagged.

"Well, I can tell you it ain't day. Don't know what you're used to, but unlike you city folk, I don't enjoy being woken up in the middle of the night by some screeching lunatic beside my bed."

"_Mphmphmm Mphm._"

"I'll accept your apology this time, but do that again and I'll throw you outside, hear?"

"_Mphm_."

The old man removed the rag and tossed it onto a pile in the corner, leaving Robert to cough up the taste which had accrued in his mouth. He was seated on a hard, bare, poorly-constructed wooden bed at the rear of what seemed to Robert an even more poorly-constructed wooden shack. There were no windows, but shafts of moonlight seeped regardless through cracks in the walls and roof due to the irregular paneling of the boards. The shack was not large. The bed took up most of the floor, and the remaining space disappeared with the inclusion of a small thin table barely large enough to lay one's dinner on, and a set of uneven wooden shelves upon which lay a strange collection of clear jars, which housed even stranger collections of assorted powders, fruits, and pickled bits of animals. This set-up resulted in an aisle through the middle of the room, leading from the bed to the door — or at least the place where a door should have been. In its stead, a free-standing board covered the entrance, obviously meant to be removed whenever someone came in and put back when they left. In the aisle was a blanket and pillow, which likely meant to go on the bed Robert was on, and the old man, who was slowly laying himself back down to continue sleeping.

A thought suddenly occurred to Robert, and he whipped his head around in a panic. He remembered the eyes. The giant boulder. The monsters.

"It was just a dream," he told himself. "I'm not crazy."

"Sure," said the old man, crawling back under his blanket. "You're not crazy. Now shut up, please."

"It was just a horrible nightmare. Oh gosh! But it was so real! T-there were all these eyes chasing me, and then this boulder — o-only it wasn't actually a boulder at all! It was th-this, th-this… _thing_, this monster!"

"Old Kragg," corrected the old man.

"Sorry. Old Kragg. And then the eyes came out from the shadows, but they weren't actually eyes either! They were monsters, too! In my dream th-there were these giant, er, flapping… umm… purple..."

"Purple?"

"Terrifyingly violet."

"Venomoth, then."

"Well, these venomoth were just, just everywhere really, and making horrible noises. It was awful. And there were these creatures with bones on the outside of their bodies and horns on their—"

"Houndoom," interjected the old man.

"W-what?"

"The pokemon you're talking about." The old man yawned. "They're the ones who dropped you off here."

"Oh, yes. Of course. Umm…" Robert scratched his chin. "W-where was I?"

"I don't care. Go to sleep," said the old man, and promptly did so himself.

After a time, snores filled the shack, and Robert was left alone with his thoughts. He tried to remember where he was, and why he was in a shack. He thought about the old man, and tried to recall who he could be. Perhaps he worked at the office, he thought. They could be co-workers. Couldn't they?

The dark around him was close and pressed against him like a wall. Outside the shack, he could hear the sound of water babbling. The wind softly whistling through the cracks brought the smell of pine needles to Robert's senses. It was cool in the shack, but wasn't it the middle of November? Yet the bed was warm, and his thoughts were dull. Robert lay back down and closed his eyes. He forgot the monstrous dream. He forgot the strange old man, and the strange shack, and the strange forest. The word "pokemon" flitted through his head, trying to find something to connect with. The low _chirrup_-ing outside reminded him of crickets and made him feel safe, and a blanket sleep enclosed him utterly.

Robert dreamed.

—

Robert awoke screaming. The old man was already attempting to gag him with an even filthier rag than the first, and Robert had to clutch the old man's arm to keep it at bay. "They're back!" he yelped. "Dear merciful God, they're back!"

"Quit hollerin', lad! It ain't even a second past dawn. Who's back?"

"The Giant, Flapping, Purple Things!" wailed Robert. "They're outside! I saw them through the wall!" And he pointed a trembling finger at a hole by the bed. It was barely dawn. Only the feeblest rays of light shown through the cracks. The old man knelt down and peeped through.

"Ah," he said calmly, "the venomoth."

"Oh God, you see them, too?"

Robert held his head in his hands. "Then it wasn't a dream. No. It wasn't a dream at all." He looked at the old man pleadingly. "What do we do?" he said. "Fight them off?"

"Fight them off?"

"Well, they're dangerous, aren't they?"

The old man shrugged. "Only to bugs, maybe. It's what they're eating right now. Do you want to look?"

"No! I never want to see them again!" said Robert, his voice cracking from hysteria. "What are they even doing here? Why don't they leave?"

"I expect they're just here for their snack."

"Th-their snack?"

"Yep. Make it for 'em myself. Bit of honey on a rag. Flies stick right on. The venomoth appreciate it, I think, whenever I leave a few out there."

Robert glanced at the pile of soiled rags in the corner, thought, and immediately wanted to throw up. "H-how many are out there?" he asked, trying not to think about anything anymore.

"Couple dozen, looks like," said the old man, "the venomoth, I mean." Robert made a noise that sounded a cross between a sob and a wail. The old man looked at him funny. He gave him an appraising look and put a finger to his white-haired chin. Then he went over to the shelves and brought out a rock which Robert recognized immediately. It was the rock he had snapped from the living boulder. The piece of the monster.

"What are you doin' here, lad?" said the old man, rolling the rock in his withered hand. "You got your suit and your tie and your nice leather shoes… look like you're ready to sit at a desk all day and start filing taxes. Yet here you are, in the middle of nowhere, stirrin' up a fuss. Heard it all last night. Old Kragg up again. The forest pokemon stomp'n all over the place tryin' to calm him down. And you, scream'n your head off like a sissy. You decide to come this way for a reason, lad? Got lost on your way to some important meeting? 'Cause all you've managed to do since coming here is run rampant through their territory, maim this forest's protector, and yell my ear off all night."

"That's… well…" stuttered Robert. "I'm very sorry."

The old man gave him a hard look. "Sorry ain't gonna cut it with Old Kragg." He held out the rock to show Robert. "You took a nice chunk out of his temple. I wouldn't be surprised if he took a chunk out of yours, just to be fair."

Robert's hand flew up, and the old man gave a wheezing chuckle. "Now, now," he said. "I doubt he'll do it. Old Kragg's not so old-fashioned as he used to be. Maybe he'll just ask for one of your teeth or something."

There was a clamor as Robert leapt to his feet. He was halfway to the sliding panel before the old man got a hold of him. "Let me go!" he yelped. "I'm making a run for it!"

"No, you're not! D'you not know nothin', boy? Old Kragg will sense you runnin' before you're even a hundred yards out."

"What?!"

"He's a rock-type. He lives in the ground. Knows his dirt, you know? You're clumsy and oaf-footed. Your fat feet will be poundin' in his ears with every step! You can't get away from this, lad. It's over."

Robert stopped and gaped at the old man. What he was spouting was nonsense. Utter nonsense. And yet, the image of that beast rising from the earth would not leave his mind, and gave him reason to pause. Slowly, and with encouragement from the old man, Robert returned to the bed. After a moment, Robert looked up at the old man, who was standing over him apprehensively.

"W-what is he?" asked Robert, forcing himself not to picture that horrifying creature any more than necessary. "A monster?"

The old man relaxed a little and picked his chin. "Well, maybe to some. But he's an onix, of course. A bit bigger than others, maybe, but they get like that when they're that old. And Old Kragg is plenty old. Truthfully, I'd reckon he's the same as any other pokemon around here, except for the obvious thing—"

But Robert was distracted. There was that word again: "pokemon." Robert was tired of guessing what it meant and finally asked the old man.

At first he didn't get the question.

"What do you mean, 'What's a pokemon?' " he said. "They don't got any from where you're from?"

"I'm… from Milwaukee."

The old man looked at him. "That supposed to be a city?" Robert glumly nodded. "Hmph. Sounds like a sickness."

"You wouldn't be far off."

"And what is it that you do in Mill-Wall-Key?"

"Err, I'm an accountant."

The old man raised his eyebrows. "Ah," he said, "how, umm, useful. Very good outdoors, you accountants?"

Robert gave a tight smile. The old man pressed on.

"Well, no matter. No matter, Mr… err—" he gestured at him.

"R-Robert. Robert Whist."

"Well, Mr Robert Whist, pokemon are… umm." The old man scratched his head and for a moment did not speak. "Well, they're those things out there," he said somewhat lamely. "And… umm… well, they've always just kind of been there, I guess."

"Always?" asked Robert.

The old man seemed genuinely confused and thoughtful. "I think so," he said slowly. "Can't imagine a day without one."

Robert shivered. "That sounds terrifying."

"Well, most of 'em are friendly, and that's helpful. The trick is just not piss'n off the not-so-friendly ones."

"And…" Robert gulped. "Which ones are the 'not-so-friendly ones?' "

Shafts of red morning light pierced through the cracks like flaming arrows. The old man noted the change. "Sun's up," he said, although his face was grim. He looked at Robert and gave, what seemed to him, a fleeting, last look.

"Those houndoom will probably be back for you soon."

There was silence. Robert's throat had gone dry. "Excuse me?"

The old man looked away. He handed Robert the piece of Old Kragg.

"Try to make a deal with him," he said furtively, as though attempting not to be heard. "He may be old, and that disease of his might be rotting him soft, but he's a gambler at heart. Strike a deal, no matter what it takes."

"W-what are you saying?" said Robert shakily. He was suddenly very scared again. "Strike a deal? What are you—"

"Those pokemon who brought you here weren't being charitable, lad. They only wanted to buy some time."

Robert was fighting for clarity. "Time? Time for what?"

"Your trial."

"Trial?! I haven't committed a crime!"

Now the old man looked at him. His face was sympathetic, and his veritable age seemed to emanate with a profound empathy that Robert could not fully understand. The hardness in his eyes was still there, however, and he said brusquely, "There ain't but one law in this place, lad. And you broke it tah splinters."

"And what's that?

"Don't wake Old Kragg."

At that moment, there came a scraping at the door. And over the two men inside the shack, there came a low, rising whine, which to Robert even now seemed to be coming from the very hounds of hell.


End file.
